AK Foreclosure Listings and How to Save Your Home from Foreclosure.

AK Foreclosure Buying Information

No matter the area, from Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Sitka or Wasilla or any Alaskan population center, no area is free from foreclosures and the reduction of home prices. No price range or particular area has a lock on how to keep their neighborhood safe from banks that made risky loans to people who could not afford the mortgage.

So what do you do if you're not going to foreclosure?

Invest in Alaska foreclosure listings while the real estate market is on the rebound.
The stock market is as unpredictable on the best of days during the best of times, but people will always need a roof over their heads.

Read more about AK foreclosure listings and educate yourself on the communities you are most interested in or start shopping here for the Alaskan foreclosure home that best meets your needs. If you are facing a pending foreclosure call a local real estate professional and determine your options and what is available to you. Your specific options will depend on your particular situation. Variables may depend on where in Alaska the home is located, how much is owed and how much the home is currently valued.

Alaska Foreclosure Rates and Trends

Alaska is a sparsely populated state with pockets of municipalities, towns and cities. The foreclosure rate in Alaska is less than the national average. This relative stability is mainly due to the stability of the population. Alaska has seen growth in several sectors including oil, mining, logging and commercial fishing. In fact unemployment in Alaska is 30% less than the national average.

Where Do Most Alaska Foreclosures Occur?

Most AK foreclosure listings are in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and other less populace cities and towns as they are the most densely populated areas of the state. It is not because these areas have a citizenry that has a lower or higher propensity to go to foreclosure through some unseen economic force.

Q. Does this mean that people in these areas don't pay their bills or that there are no jobs in these countries?

A. No, this is because Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau, Wasilla and Sitka are the most densely populated areas in the state of Alaska, concurrently the higher the population the more mortgages and the more foreclosures.

Q. Does this mean that people have given up or are leaving the state of Alaska in higher numbers than other states?

A. No, Alaska has seen fairly stable employment figures as compared to most states. As of this writing Alaska has about half the unemployment of the state of Nevada.

Q. Does this mean that the average cost of a home in Alaska has lost more of its value than other states?

A. No, Alaska has faired the economic decline far better than most states. Alabama has a less transient population than most other states. The annual population increase of Alaska is approximately half the national average which indicates that there is a more sustainable economy that does not rely on booms and is less likely to experience busts.

Q. Is Alaska affected by a higher number of properties losing their value?

A. Alaska is blessed with an abundance of natural resources, from oil and logging to commercial fishing and mining. These natural resources support a stable economy and have spared the state from the recent economic woes that have devastated states more reliant on manufacturing or service providers.

How Do Alaska Foreclosures Affect You?

Sub-prime mortgages have affected us all, even if you don't have a sub-prime mortgage.

Let's say that four houses on one cul-de-sac were all built by the same builder and all cost the same and were all bought the same day. Three of the houses had the normal 5% down and the mortgage was fixed. But that one house in the corner the one with the pretty blue shutters was bought by some one who used a sub-prime loan. This means that they bought the house without their hard earned savings (zero money down) they were not required to prove their income or anything else for that matter.

Well that fourth house with the sub-prime mortgage is probably has an adjustable rate mortgage as well. When that rate went up a couple of points and the home owner did not get that promotion and they bought that new car, you know the one. Well that was the end of their owning that home and now the value of all of the other three homes is reduced by the fact that the fourth house will be sold at a loss to get it off the banks books.

Your house has just lost value and you had nothing to do with it.

I say renegotiate your loan or walk.

It's like opening the mail and getting a bill for $100,000 that you knew nothing about. That bill belongs to the bank not you. It is their loss as they are the ones that set up the situation and profited in the short term while they ask you to pay $100,000 more than your home is worth because of their greed and stupidity.

HUD Foreclosures

HUD foreclosures and VA Foreclosures are some of the best homes to buy when price is part of the equation. As with most Americans, price is always a concern. If not buying the same house for less, why not buy more house for the same dollar invested? When looking for a good deal it is hard to do better than the VA or HUD foreclosures market. The simple truth is that there are just more VA and HUD homes on the market, as they represent such a large number of mortgages that are generated each year. This translates into more foreclosures just by the magnitude of difference between all others comparing to the two largest.

The two largest also being government owned and operated means that they have less time to wait to make money back on the home. The FHA is especially known for selling HUD homes for less than the average sales price in a given area. FHA foreclosures represent a fraction of HUD but they are still a significant number of homes and both should be considered.

VA (Veterans Administration) and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) have different and unique opportunities for the buyer. Both are often forgiven for the local taxes normally associated with the purchase of a home (this is on a county by county basis). Be sure to ask the local title company or escrow company to look into it for you before closing as this is often missed due to their are not used to dealing with the 2 to 3 percent of the market that VA and HUD foreclosures represent.

Foreclosure Listings Increasing

As the market settled after the mortgage meltdown foreclosure listings also settled and fewer homes were on the market with a placard reading “Bank Foreclosure” in big red lettering. This was a good thing for the entire real estate market. Having an abundance of foreclosures brings the entire market down and it makes it harder for home owners, who would like to move, to get the appropriate price for their home as a similar home down the same street was sold for substantially less and the appraiser is using the foreclosure as a comparable sale.

This is just one of the problems when there are too many foreclosure listings in any area. Another issue is the television set that sits in everyone’s living room harping about the price of homes based on the number of foreclosures and this constant barrage of negative information makes most people sit on the sidelines waiting for the market to either implode completely or to correct itself. Meanwhile while they wait, others are buying foreclosure listings and making great investments.

Whatever the reason, a market can only handle so many foreclosure listings at any given time. The more foreclosures, the lower the market gets and this is a lesson the banks that were foreclosing and selling off realized too late. The market and their investments would have been better off if there had not been a rush to divest themselves of the toxic assets made more toxic by their own actions.